MODULE 5

Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theories

Learning Outcomes
At the end of this module, you should be able to:

 Explain Freud’s views about child and adolescent development.

 Draw implication of Freud’s theory to education.

Psychoanalytic Theory
- is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality
development.

Psychosexual Stages of Development

Sigmund Freud is considered to be the founder of the psychodynamic approach

to psychology, which looks to unconscious drives to explain human behavior. Freud believed
that the mind is responsible for both conscious and unconscious decisions that it makes on
the basis of psychic drives.

1. The Oral Stage (birth to 18 months)

- The focus is the mouth.
- During this stage, the child is focused on oral pleasures.
- Babies experience world through their mouth.
- Fixations are: smoking, overeating, nail biting, and
chewing on pencils as adults.
2. The Anal Stage (18 months
to 3 years)
- The child focus in this stage is the Anus.The child's
satisfaction is eliminating and releasing feces.
Through society's s expectations, particularly the
parents, the child needs to work on toilet training.
- Fixations are: orderliness, rigidity.

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3. Phallic Stage (ages 3 to 6)
- The pleasure zone is the genital. During the
pre-school age, children are interested in what
makes boys and girls different.
- Freud's studies lead him to believe that during
this stage boys develop sexual desire for their
mother and see their father as rival for her
mother's affection.
- Fixations are: vanity, exhibitionism, pride.
4. Latency Stage
(age 6 to puberty)
- It's during this stage that sexual urges
remain repressed.The children's focus on
the acquisition of physical and academic
skills.
- Child usually has few opposite sex friends.
- This stage is important in developing self-
confidence and social and communicating
skills.
- Fixations are: lack of friends with opposite
sex.
5. Genital stage
(puberty onwards)
- The fifth stage of Psychosexual
Development begins at the start of puberty
where sexual urges are once again
awakened.
- Person becomes interested in dating and
marriage.
- Fixations are: guilt about sexuality, feelings
of inadequacy, poor sexual relationship,
anxious feeling regarding the opposite sex.

Freud's Personality Components

1. The Id
 Freud says that a child is born with Id. It plays a vital role in one's personality
because as a baby, it works so that the baby's essential needs are meet.
 The Id operates on the pleasure principles.
 Nothing else matters to the id except the satisfaction of its own needs.
 The id operates based on the pleasure principle, which demands immediate
gratification of needs.
2. The Ego
 The ego operates using the reality principle.
It is aware that others also have needs to be met.It is practical because it knows

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 that being impulsive or selfish can result to
negative consequences later so it consider
the best response to situations.
 The ego is the realistic part.

3. The Superego
 The superego embodies a person's moral
aspect. This develops from what the parents,
teachers, and other persons who exert
influence impart to be good or moral.
 The superego is likened to conscience
because it exerts influence on what once
consider right and wrong.
Topographical Model
The Unconscious
- Freud said that most what we go through in our lives, emotions, feelings, beliefs
and impulses deep within are not available to us at a conscious level.
- He believed that what influence us most is our unconscious. The Oedipus and
Electra complex were both buried down into unconscious, out of our awareness
due to the extreme anxiety they caused. While these complexes are in our
unconscious they still influence our thinking, feeling, and doing dramatic ways.
- The Oedipal complex, also known as the Oedipus complex, is a term
used by Sigmund Freud in his theory of psychosexual stages of development to
describe a sense of competition with his father for the affections of her mother.
- The Electra complex is a psychoanalytic term used to describe a girl's sense
of competition with her mother for the affections of her father.
The Conscious
- Freud also said that all that we are aware is stored in our conscious mind.
- Comprises a very small part of who we are so that, in our everyday life, we are only
aware of a very small part of what makes up our personality

The Subconscious
- The last part is the preconscious or subconscious mind. This is the part of us that
we can reach if prompted, but is not in our proper conscious.
- Information such as our telephone number, some childhood memories, or the
name of your best childhood friend is stored in the preconscious.

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